Palestinian fighters killed in raid

The two men, killed in Gaza near Karni crossing, were said to be Hamas members.

08 Aug 2007 10:55 GMT

Israeli soldiers continue to raid Gaza to capture or kill Palestinian fighters from time to time [EPA]

Local residents and medical staff in Gaza said the men belonged to Hamas, the Islamic faction which took over the coastal territory from secular Fatah during a brief civil war in June.

Palestinian doctors confirmed that two men in Hamas uniforms had arrived dead at the hospital.

The latest deaths took to 5,808 the number of people killed since the beginning of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinian, according to an AFP tally.

Bomb explosion

On Tuesday, Palestinian fighters exploded a bomb outside a major security compound occupied by Hamas forces in Gaza, officials said.

No one was injured in the blast, security sources said. Officials said that the bomb was thrown into a garbage container from a vehicle that drove by the compound, which was once a headquarters of Fatah.

Also on Tuesday, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, arrived in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, where he is to meet Hosni Mubarak, his Egyptian counterpart.

The meeting comes within framework of ongoing co-ordination and consultation between the two sides.

The two sides will also discuss the situation in the Palestinian territories, resumption of peace process as well as the international conference for peace called for by George Bush, the US president.